


Dreams

by red_river



Series: Second Chances [1]
Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Day Two: Missing, M/M, Mikorei Week 2016, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 07:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8154760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_river/pseuds/red_river
Summary: Mikoto has returned from the dead to make love to Reishi in his dreams.  That's what Reishi decides, after the third night his subconscious is a smear of scarlet and searing heat.In the wake of Mikoto’s death, Reishi dreams of passionate reunion.  Sort of NSFW, but much of it is ethereal.  Romance, angst.





	

**Dreams**

 

Mikoto has returned from the dead to make love to Reishi in his dreams.  That’s what Reishi decides, after the third night his subconscious is a smear of scarlet and searing heat, of pale limbs entwined in frothing linen sheets, of the low voice of the Red King breathing a satisfied sigh into the seashell of his ear.  All day at Scepter 4, that sound haunts him like the sound of an ocean receding, forever out of reach.

It’s not memory.  For all the shackles that bound them to each other, Mikoto never shared this with him: this physical madness, this fever dream.  Reishi wonders if that’s why he’s here, now—if he’s come back to resolve something that’s hung like a suspended chord since the Red Sword went down.

Reishi imagines that’s his own madness talking.

Still, he relishes these images, this lie.  Stares down unseeing at his paperwork when the pen between his fingers becomes Mikoto’s fingers instead, entangling him, pulling him down.

_“Should have known you’d take your…damn time,” Mikoto grouses, the words hitching in the middle as Reishi’s tongue ignites a line along the hollow of his knee, traces the soft arch of his foot.  Everything about Mikoto is much softer than he expected.  The cadence of his breath.  The ridges of his knuckles.  The burn in half-lidded gold eyes as Reishi sinks in, loses himself in the Red King’s rhythm, their hips colliding like gears out of sync.  Maybe they both want this too much to get it just right.  Maybe method is impossible when every time feels like the last time._

_“More,” Mikoto groans, fingernails digging into his shoulders, his biceps, melting under Reishi like he’s begging to be reforged.  “Deeper…Reishi—ah, Reishi—”_

That’s ego, Reishi knows.  He is long out of practice with this sort of thing—fantasy and sex, both.  In the flesh, he doubts Mikoto would have been impressed.  In the flesh, he has the sense he would be the one melting, one more thing the Red King burned down.

Perhaps the greatest license he takes is imagining the way Mikoto would say his name: breathless and rough, head thrown back into the tumult of pillows, tongue darting over dry lips like the sound left them cracked, like he needed Reishi to kiss it away.  Reishi likes the taste of his name on Mikoto’s tongue.

It doesn’t taste like smoke from withered cigarettes, ashes he still carries in his mouth.  It doesn’t taste like blood, the blood he tasted in the moment after impact, when Mikoto sunk into him and he bit his cheek to keep from sinking, too, because one of them had to stand.

_Reishi likes this part best, when Mikoto’s close—moving erratically, his eyelids a blur of pleasure and surprise.  He likes the tense and shock of Mikoto’s muscles around him, the way he breathes so hard his rib cage seems to creak beneath his skin.  He likes the damp strands of red hair stuck to Mikoto’s forehead and the constellation of freckles on Mikoto’s shoulder that he never saw, in life, doesn’t know why he’s invented them.  He likes to fasten his teeth around an earlobe and feel Mikoto shudder._

_He wants to be molded around the Red King just like this, a perfect fit: the right size to slide between Mikoto’s knees, hips cut at the perfect angle to catch his leg bones, pull them eternally deeper and deeper, into each other.  He wants to burn out into one blaze, the last spark of an emaciated universe, white-hot enough to ignite the next one._

In his dreams, Reishi dominates.  He acknowledges there is likely some ego in this, too—bringing to heel the wild King he couldn’t control, the bonfire that was burning long before the Colorless King struck the final match.  But he can’t resist.  Not when Mikoto is waiting for him beyond the veil of sleep, his body languid in the bed, every muscle softening in boneless relief as Reishi pushes him down, melds their mouths together, brings them to conflagration.  Not when Mikoto says his name this way.

He wonders if Mikoto is trying to atone for something.

_“I don’t remember you ever being so docile,” Reishi says, on the fourth night, giving in finally to the delusion that there’s anything here to speak to._

_Mikoto looks at him straight to center, so close all Reishi can see are his pupils as their bodies entwine, devour, unite.  “Don’t remember you ever giving me the chance.”_

That’s what haunts him, in the daylight hours—one world superimposed over the other, the Red King caught like a glimmer of scarlet in the corner of his eye.  It’s the intimation of a missed opportunity, the thought that his bed could have known the shape of Mikoto’s body, the precise way he blinked the morning’s fog out of those lazy, beautiful eyes.  It’s the suggestion that there was a part of Mikoto that would have surrendered to him, if he’d just known how to push.

He doesn’t need anyone to tell him this isn’t wise.  There’s no way to construe this that isn’t damaged and flawed, a submission to selfish delusion.  But it hardly matters.  The Blue Sword is already coming apart.  The power in his veins is already starting to whittle him to ashes.  If he’s going to burn out, he wants to do it this way: wrapped around Mikoto, listening to that rough voice raised in symphony every time Reishi moves.

_Mikoto is more frantic than usual, straddling his hips, knees pressed hard into the mattress as he moves like a piston, moaning into Reishi’s dark hair.  Reishi suspects he knows what that means._

_“This is the last time, then?” he asks this ghost or specter, burning the question like a brand into Mikoto’s clavicle._

_Mikoto’s breath hitches.  But perhaps that’s not the answer Reishi reads it for—perhaps that’s just a response to the hand wrapped around him, a sequence of slow strokes, their bodies moving in flawless rhythm, point and counterpoint, a smoldering dance in three-quarter time. It only took them five days to perfect this.  Reishi wonders how brightly they could have burned, if they had a lifetime._

_“At least let me hear you,” he whispers against Mikoto’s throat, and Mikoto crumples into him, his breath blister hot against Reishi’s ear._

_“Faster, hah…come on, take me apart…ah—Reishi, Reishi, Reish—”_

_In the aftermath, they lie side by side, close enough to share one heartbeat.  Reishi’s body feels empty as an echo chamber, the skeleton of a dark cello.  He traces wistful fingers along the line of Mikoto’s jaw, lets them get lost in the tangle of brilliant red hair._

_“I loved you, Mikoto.”_

_Mikoto’s smile is sad as he turns his head, bumps their noses together like stars in fatal collision.  “Don’t say it like that.”_

_It’s the only safe way to say it.  There’s heartache lurking on the other side of present tense, pretending that all of this isn’t long over.  But Reishi can’t deny him that, doesn’t even fear his incineration when they’re lying this close, Mikoto’s body soft and pliant in his arms._

_“I love you.”_

_Mikoto leans in, kisses him, then chuckles at the rasp of their lips catching, the way neither of them wants to move away.  Reishi begs himself to remember the Red King like this: affectionate and sluggish, playfully amused.  Not as a body sinking into his.  Not as a shiver that spread to the end of every nerve until he couldn’t feel the snow under his knees, the wet lines freezing to his red-flecked cheeks._

_“’m waitin’ for you,” Mikoto promises.  It’s not a promise Reishi wants.  It makes him want to do nothing to avert this.  It makes him want the Blue Sword to come down now, sever him from his life and his kingship so he can devote himself forever to the love of a ghost._

_Well.  It won’t be long, at the rate he’s falling._

_“I love you,” Reishi says again, just for the bruising force of it, the rush of Mikoto’s eyes blown wide.  Then the Red King hooks a leg over his hip, reunites them, and Reishi loses himself for the last time in this simple, beautiful implosion._

* * *

Jungle goes to pieces.  Reishi does his part.  The Blue Sword shudders in the sky.  Then the Silver King beats him to a Damocles Down, and suddenly there is no relief waiting for Reishi in the arms of red flame.  There is only this: Scepter 4 and Shizume City, and a wasteland of numberless days stretching out before him, the memory of Mikoto’s voice growing gradually threadbare.  Reishi’s not sure he can forgive Weismann for that.

But at night—oh, how he dreams.


End file.
